Ian flies the world

To be sure, I paid for the tickets to Ireland

This proved, indirectly, to be one of the most expensive
weeks of my life, because it established a couple of dangerous
precedents. Firstly, that it is affordable to buy air tickets
for oneself and not feel completely as if one has just been hit
over the head with a large plank. A friend of mine described
paying British Rail full fare as being like that. Secondly, it
introduced my fiancee to the experience of travelling by air.
Indeed, it reinforced my own thoughts on the matter. As a
result, I would be spending a considerable amount of my wealth
on flights in future, and a love of travel would result in a
complete change in my life. More of this in a later chapter.

The flights themselves were not very memorable. Aer Lingus
ran Boeing 737 aircraft on the route. These were clean,
efficient and spacious after the BAC 1-11 on the Edinburgh
route. Everything has a distinct greenness, and this was to be
continued on our arrival in Ireland. I recommend the following
hotels in Ireland. In Dublin, the Gresham in Upper O'Connell
Street; In Killarney, the Torc Great Southern on Park Road. If
you are travelling in Ireland, you should investigate the rail
passes offered by CIE (Irish Railways) unless you really want to
fly internally. One caution I would give to anybody staying in a
hotel in Ireland is to be wary of the locks on the doors of your
room. To say more would bring the reputation of at least one of
these excellent establishments into disrepute, and as they
apologised in the form of a complimentary weekend stay there, I
will say no more on the matter. All in all, the stay was
excellent, with not only clean aeroplanes which fly on time, but
clean trains which run on time too.

Irish trains and aeroplanes are full. They are never
overfull, in my experience, but they are filled to capacity. You
cannot complain about this, for it combines comfort with
profitability.

Anyway, we took lots of photographs, and many happy
memories remain from that holiday. We were also most cautious on
our return journey to make sure there was no film in our
cameras. After all, we didn't know that it was possible for
cameras to be checked manually, or that in most so-called
civilised parts of the world, the level of X-ray in the machine
isn't enough to fog films anyway. We came back to England with
more lovely pictures of Dublin airport than might otherwise be
expected. This was, of course, in our younger days, when we
didn't know that most countries don't like people photographing
their airports. Even if we did know, we tended not to visit that
sort of country anyway.

Come on, Ian, you must be able to say more about your
trip to Ireland than that.OK, I'll add to it when I get time and a memory...Next pagePrevious pageBack home